In business applications, there it is often useful to map one business object to another. The business objects may be documents that are semantically or contextually related within the context of the business application. For example, a sales order may be mapped to a delivery, a delivery to a stock, a stock to a purchase order or production order, etc. Some business applications or business systems support cross-docking, where inbound deliveries are coordinated with outbound deliveries to eliminate goods processing operations and improve efficiency. The mapping of outbound deliveries to inbound deliveries, inbound transfers, and/or inbound stock can be significantly important to enable the cross-docking scenarios.
In current applications, each business object may have an independent concept of mapping. Thus, the functions or actions performed to map one business object to another may not be the same functions or actions needed to map other business objects. Examples of mapping concepts include, but are not limited to, use of document history, use of reservation table(s), via cross-docking decision table(s), etc. When a new business application is developed, it may be developed with its own independent method of mapping. The use of independent methods of mapping results in wasted and/or duplicated effort.